/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18387747]

Why do anglos rate this so highly?

[Anonymous No.18387752]

>>18387747
Because
>muh anglo poet!!!!

[Anonymous No.18387754]

>>18387747
Let me guess, you got filtered?

[Anonymous No.18387755]

>wow he uses so many western civ lit references

[Anonymous No.18387760]

>>18387747
Because it’s good and even if they’re anglos and the scum of the earth, worse than niggers and the Jew even, they can still recognize how good Milton is

[Anonymous No.18387790]

>>18387747
I've only ever read Paradife Loft

[Anonymous No.18387798]

Because it's intensely beautiful.

[Anonymous No.18387808]

>>18387798
post an intensely beautiful passage from paradise lost

[Anonymous No.18387822]

>>18387747
Have you read it?

[Anonymous No.18387827]

>>18387808
Why should he? You will dismiss it, anyway. ESLs shouldn't judge English literature if they're retarded.

[Anonymous No.18387888]

>>18387747
Because Milton coined several new words in it, including my favorite: pandemonium.

[Anonymous No.18387956]

>>18387808
“Is this the Region, this the Soil, the Clime,”
Said then the lost Arch Angel, “this the seat
That we must change for Heav’n, this mournful gloom
For that celestial light? Be it so, since he
Who now is Sovran can dispose and bid
What shall be right: farthest from him is best
Whom reason hath equall’d, force hath made supreme
Above his equals. Farewell happy Fields
Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrors, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings
A mind not to be chang’d by Place or Time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less than he
Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th’Almighty hath not built
Her for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n.
But wherefore let we then our faithful friends,
Th’associates and co-partners of our loss
Live thus astonish on th’oblivious Pool,
And call then not to share with us their part
In this unhappy Mansion, or once more
With rallied arms to try what may be yet
Regain’d in Heav’n, or what more lost in Hell?”

[Anonymous No.18387998]

>>18387956

[Anonymous No.18388049]

>>18387956
Bear with me, ESL. I've never been able to quite parse these lines:
>... farthest from him is best
>Whom reason hath equall’d, force hath made supreme
>Above his equals.

I think if I try to articulate Satan's point, it goes something like "it's better to stay far away from your equal in reason when said equal would dominate you by force".
More faithfully, it seems to be written like:

"Further from the 'person that reason has shown us is merely our equal' is better; mere force has (unjustly?) made him our superior."

I think the "Whom" and the comma before "force" in the original text are the nexuses of my confusion, somehow.

[Anonymous No.18388054]

>>18387747
I have this exact version and desu it feels kind of cheap.

[Anonymous No.18388075]

>>18387956
Not one use of nigger. Absolute trash.

[Anonymous No.18388084]

>>18388049
I think that's pretty much it. Of course it shows Satan's immense hubris that he considered himself equal to God in reason, and if he hadn't been BTFO immediately prior to this scene he would have claimed equal force as well

[Anonymous No.18388089]

>>18388049
>"Further from the 'person that reason has shown us is merely our equal' is better; mere force has (unjustly?) made him our superior."
ESL as well so take my reading may not be correct either but this is more or less what I understand as well, only I think "farthest from him is best" refers to the previous lines where he talks that the sovereign has won can now decide what is right, and since they are defeated, it's best to stay as far away as they can

[Anonymous No.18388098]

>>18387956
while the dialog is great, I think the non-speaking parts are the best. Like the part where Satan rises from the lake of fire and slings the shield over his back and Milton describes the shield as being like a moon.

[Anonymous No.18388110]

>"If thou beest he—but O how fallen! how changed
>From him who, in the happy realms of light
>Clothed with transcendent brightness, didst outshine
>Myriads, though bright!—if he whom mutual league,
>United thoughts and counsels, equal hope
>And hazard in the glorious enterprise
>Joined with me once, now misery hath joined
>In equal ruin; into what pit thou seest
>From what height fallen: so much the stronger proved
>He with his thunder; and till then who knew
>The force of those dire arms? Yet not for those,
>Nor what the potent Victor in his rage
>Can else inflict, do I repent, or change,
>Though changed in outward lustre, that fixed mind,
>And high disdain from sense of injured merit,
>That with the Mightiest raised me to contend,
>And to the fierce contentions brought along
>Innumerable force of Spirits armed,
>That durst dislike his reign, and, me preferring,
>His utmost power with adverse power opposed
>In dubious battle on the plains of Heaven,
>And shook his throne. What though the field be lost?
>All is not lost—the unconquerable will,
>And study of revenge, immortal hate,
>And courage never to submit or yield:
>And what is else not to be overcome?
>That glory never shall his wrath or might
>Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
>With suppliant knee, and deify his power
>Who, from the terror of this arm, so late
>Doubted his empire—that were low indeed;
>That were an ignominy and shame beneath
>This downfall; since, by fate, the strength of Gods,
>And this empyreal substance, cannot fail;
>Since, through experience of this great event,
>In arms not worse, in foresight much advanced,
>We may with more successful hope resolve
>To wage by force or guile eternal war,
>Irreconcilable to our grand Foe,
>Who now triumphs, and in th' excess of joy
>Sole reigning holds the tyranny of Heaven."

[Anonymous No.18388190]

>>18388049
PSA - respect to esl's, but milton is tough to appreciate as a non native speaker. No hate here - milton twists satan's syntax around like crazy to create a sense of beauty that the other characters fall for over reason. Its why the god and jebus cripes parts are intentionally super fucking boring.
My prof told us to pay special attention to how much of a beautiful clusterfuck satan's dialogue is, and if we parse what he says and why, then recognize and appreciate the seductive beauty in it, the book actually becomes much easier and better.
She was totally correct.

[Anonymous No.18388323]

>>18388098
Aye to that. I think the descriptions of the war in book 6 in particular are unequaled in the english language, as far as I've seen. If you'll forgive the middlebrow segue, it's one of the few places where, sensuously, the scale of the battle outclasses the visual spectacle of Jackson's Fellowship of the Ring opening clash of armies.

I mean, just look at this shit. The entire war section is like this.

The idea of two virtual infinities of fearless celestial heroes swarming horribly against each other; any one warrior an army, any one decision or movement an event of imperial magnificence and skill which, if realized on earth, would crack the wheel of history.


>...though numberd such
>As each divided Legion might have seemd
>A numerous Host, in strength each armed hand
>A Legion; led in fight, yet Leader seemd
>Each Warriour single as in Chief, expert
>When to advance, or stand, or turn the sway
>Of Battel, open when, and when to close
>The ridges of grim Warr; no thought of flight,
>None of retreat, no unbecoming deed
>That argu'd fear; each on himself reli'd,
>As onely in his arm the moment lay
>Of victorie; deeds of eternal fame
>Were don, but infinite: for wide was spred
>That Warr and various; somtimes on firm ground
>A standing fight, then soaring on main wing
>Tormented all the Air; all Air seemd then
>Conflicting Fire: long time in eeven scale
>The Battel hung; till Satan, who that day
>Prodigious power had shewn, and met in Armes
>No equal, raunging through the dire attack
>Of fighting Seraphim confus'd, at length
>Saw where the Sword of Michael smote, and fell'd
>Squadrons at once, with huge two-handed sway
>Brandisht aloft the horrid edge came down
>Wide wasting; such destruction to withstand
>He hasted, and oppos'd the rockie Orb
>Of tenfold Adamant, his ample Shield
>A vast circumference: At his approach
>The great Arch-Angel from his warlike toile
>Surceas'd, and glad as hoping here to end
>Intestine War in Heav'n, the arch foe subdu'd
>Or Captive drag'd in Chains, with hostile frown
>And visage all enflam'd first thus began: ...

[Anonymous No.18388377]

>>18387956
>posts from one of the only interesting books and forgets the 800 other boring and meandering lines
>>18387747
Good question, you'd think after people like Ezra Pound, T.S Eliot and Virginia Woolf absolutely ripped the poem apart from head to toe, and examined its disgusting impact basically ruining 200 years of English poetry people would stop caring about it.

[Anonymous No.18388394]

>>18388377
>Ezra Pound
hack
>T.S. Eliot
mega-hack
>Virgnia Woolf
woman.

[Anonymous No.18388408]

>>18388377
In what essays/books can one find the criticisms of these three?

[Anonymous No.18388424]

>>18388377
Pound and Eliot did more damage to English-language poetry than Milton ever did.

[Anonymous No.18388434]

>>18388190
Can you elaborate on Satan’s dialogues?

[Anonymous No.18388439]

>>18388394
>REEEEEE The people that completely reinvented poetry are hacks reeeeee
Seethe. Cope etc etc.
>>18388408
T.S Eliot has this: https://pages.mtu.edu/~rlstrick/rsvtxt/eliot
Virginia has stuff in A Room of Ones Own (first four parts I believe?)
Ezra Pound has stuff you'll find in his collected literary essays, and you can google stuff.

[Anonymous No.18388449]

>>18388424
Go on and elaborate. Do you mean everyone copied them poorly for over a hundred years, attempting to emulate them? Or was that Milton and the following centuries of dismal poets. Silly me I forgot again, anon.

[Anonymous No.18388485]

>>18388449
There were plenty of good English poets after Milton. There are zero good poets after Pound/Eliot. Curious.

[Anonymous No.18388525]

>>18388485
>this means they ruined poetry!!
Fucking moron. This argument could be applied to nearly every field that isn't booming right now, prose? check. Name a novelist as influential or impressive as Tolstoy or Joyce. Name a scientist like Einstein? A philosopher after the 50's?

Most artistic mediums are slowly spiraling into decline, or in the case of poetry abandonment. This isn't an argument for Pound or Eliot debasing the English language, like Milton's assault on it was.

[Anonymous No.18388553]

>>18388525
Not him but genuinely curious.
How did Milton debase the English language?

[Anonymous No.18388554]

>>18388525
>Name a novelist as influential or impressive as Tolstoy or Joyce.
Cervantes, Faulkner, Dostoyevksy, Flaubert, etc. Tolstoy is not even that impressive btw.
>This isn't an argument for Pound or Eliot debasing the English language, like Milton's assault on it was.
I don't think you're aware of the irony in this delusional statement. There are many good poets after Milton that aren't likee him at all. Pound in general ruined modern poetry. I blame him entirely for this meme. He looks like a Jew as well with his wool-like hair, so I'm suspicious of his perverted intentions.

[Anonymous No.18388571]

>>18388434
Milton constructs them - formally (enjambments, caesuras, substitutions, poetic device employment) and syntactically - to hide the subtlety of his message and become more beautiful. The demons in book 2 fall for his "debate" suggestion, the goal of which satan has determined before it took place and pushed into that direction.
Its also supposed to convey satan's ability to captivate people while convincing them to do horrible stuff. Kinda basic but this is still key shit to the book.

[Anonymous No.18388608]

I wonder if Milton seethed when he found out that satan does indeed speak in verse, but also uses rhymes

[Anonymous No.18388627]

>>18388554
>Cervantes, Faulkner, Dostoyevksy, Flaubert, etc. Tolstoy is not even that impressive btw.
Inconsequentially, all of these people are either contemporaries or came long before both of the people I listed. Faulkner died before either Pound or Eliot, less than two decades after Joyce.
>I don't think you're aware of the irony in this delusional statement.
You haven't given a single argument, calling something ironic with nothing to support it other than calling an incredibly noted antisemitic fascist a Jew really makes you look like an undergrad.
>There are many good poets after Milton that aren't like him at all
Okay lets play that:
>Keats
>Shelley
>Woodsworth
>WIlliam Blake
>Pope
>Dryden
I'm probably missing several. People like Keats attempted to recreate Milton in the literal with poems like Hyperion which he rightly abandoned. Shelley(s) both tried using the themes and poetic syntax of Milton to both Frankenstein and works like Prometheus Unbound. They sucked his dick, and it took forever for poetry to advance past this state.

[Anonymous No.18388660]

>>18388553
Milton was heavily dissected by people far more qualified to answer than me so: https://pages.mtu.edu/~rlstrick/rsvtxt/eliot
>Many people will agree that a man may be a great artist, and yet have a bad influence. There is more of Milton's influence in the badness of the bad verse of the eighteenth century than of anybody's else: he certainly did more harm than Dryden and Pope, and perhaps a good deal of the obloquy which has fallen on these two poets, especially the latter, because of their influence, ought to be transferred to Milton. But to put the matter simply in terms of 'bad influence' is not necessarily to bring a serious charge: because a good deal of the responsibility, when we state the problem in these terms, may devolve on the eighteenth-century poets themselves for being such bad poets that they were incapable of being influenced except for ill. There is a good deal more to the charge against Milton than this; and it appears a good deal more serious if we affirm that Milton's poetry could only be an influence for the worse, upon any poet whatever. It is more serious, also, if we affirm that Milton's bad influence may be traced much farther than the eighteenth century, and much farther than upon bad poets: if we say that it was an influence against which we still have to struggle.
Start with this I suppose.

[Anonymous No.18388665]

>>18388439
>T.S Eliot has this: https://pages.mtu.edu/~rlstrick/rsvtxt/eliot
He shits on him for being blind wtf

[Anonymous No.18388677]

>>18388665
>https://pages.mtu.edu/~rlstrick/rsvtxt/eliot
>The most important fact about Milton, for my purpose is his blindness. I do not mean that to go blind in middle life is itself enough to determine the whole nature of a man's poetry. Blindness must be considered in conjunction with Milton's personality and character, and the peculiar education which he received. It must also be considered in connexion with his devotion to, and expertness in the art of music. Had Milton been a man of very keen senses - I mean of all the five senses - his blindness would not have mattered so much. But for a man whose sensuousness, such as it was, had been withered early by book-learning, and whose gifts were naturally aural, it mattered a great deal. It would seem, indeed, to have helped him to concentrate on what he could do best.
At no period is the visual imagination conspicuous in Milton's poetry. It would be as well to have a few illustrations of what I mean by visual imagination. From Macbeth :
How is this shitting on him for being blind.

[Anonymous No.18388718]

>>18388554
>>18388627
You're both stupid. Look for good shit, you'll find it. Also kill yourselves or upload the sex tape already

[Anonymous No.18388733]

>>18388660
>Argument from authority that doesn't even deal with the particulars

[Anonymous No.18388756]

>>18388733
>bro that's an argument from authority
This wasn't a reply asking for an in-depth breakdown, he thought Eliot was attacking him for being blind you illiterate freak. Leave the board.

[Anonymous No.18388764]

>>18388756
>he thought Eliot was attacking him for being blind
That came after, retard. Learn to read. Thanks to Pound/Eliot we have Rupi Kaur and thousands of mediocrities like them. Hacks breed hacks. Seethe, cope, dilate.

[Anonymous No.18389454]

>>18387747
balls-deep into Anglo version of Xtianity
obviously skilful in composing poetry (trained in the Classics)
signs his name as "Englishman" (high national identity")
composer of THE English epic.
>Paradife Loft.

[Anonymous No.18389461]

>>18388665
it's Eliot's (and Modernists') poetics, and not about his phsyical defect. As Hulme stated the modern poetry is to be SEEN and not HEARD.
Imagism.

[Anonymous No.18390684]

>>18388049
>it's better to stay far away from your equal
Not quite. He's talking about God. He's saying even though God and Satan are equals, God's forces were too strong, and that's the only reason why God won the battle. The thing is God and Satan are not equals, that's why he lost. Simply put: "yeah, God kicked my ass, but I'm still just as strong as him... in my mind." And the whole "farthest from him is best" is just sour grapes. He's not happy to be kicked out of heaven, but he's like "yeah, you know what? I'm glad I'm not in heaven. Fuck that place. Sunshine and clouds and happiness and bullshit. I like it here in hell."

It's maximum cope. He reiterates it with "the mind... can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." Yeah, you can convince yourself hell is a good place if you use enough "reason."

[Anonymous No.18390692]

>A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,
>As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames
>No light; but rather darkness visible
>Served only to discover sights of woe,
>Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
>And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
>That comes to all, but torture without end
>Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
>With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.
fucking beautiful

[Anonymous No.18390721]

>>18390692
Absolutely. These niggas had such a great command of iambic pentameter

[Anonymous No.18390766]

>>18387956
a 4chan manifesto

[Anonymous No.18390812]

>>18387747
Is it worth reading?

[Anonymous No.18390815]

>>18390812
Absolutely, are you braindead?

[Anonymous No.18390843]

>>18387747
>As a republican activist, he openly opposed church and royal authority.
INTO THE TRASH IT GOES

[Anonymous No.18390858]

>>18387956
>But wherefore let we then our faithful friends,
>Th’associates and co-partners of our loss
>Live thus astonish on th’oblivious Pool,
>And call then not to share with us their part
>In this unhappy Mansion,

Always thought this bit sounded a lot like Claudius in Hamlet, or the Duke in Measure for Measure

[Anonymous No.18390862]

>>18388377
I’m interested in hearing Woolf on Milton, have a source?

[Anonymous No.18390871]

>>18390862
Quash that
Just seen
>>18388439

[Anonymous No.18390887]

im italin and i consider it in the top 10 books europeans (that is, humanity) ever wrote.

[Anonymous No.18390974]

>>18387747
I'm English and I hated it. Hardly ever rhymed. Just overblown prose in verse-form.

[Anonymous No.18390987]

>>18388525
>Name a novelist as influential or impressive as Tolstoy or Joyce
Pynchon
>Name a scientist like Einstein?
Ok I'll give you that
>A philosopher after the 50's?
Deleuze

[Anonymous No.18392151]

>>18387747
Because it's phenomenal.